Growing 101: Light!

Hello Steem,
Growing 101
-I am doing a series of posts with useful grow information, hopefully you'll like it, these will be brief informational blogs mainly focused on smaller indoor growing. **

-This segment's going to look at light(danger:do not look at your lights). Not lighting persay but just light and your need to control it.
Marijuana is flowering photosensitive, it requires a minimum amount of DARKNESS to flower and although I talk about light, what we really need is DARK. Darkness is what triggers marijuana's reproduction(bud's!), it determines for the plant the time of year, and when it will start to produce seeds and reproduce. So what does this mean for us as growers? We have to manipulate the light received bye the plants so we can dictate when they grow, and when they bud. New growers often underestimate the importance of this factor when endeavoring to grow.
Any variation in this light routine during the bud cycle will result in bad effects, usually plants get very stressed and revert to hermaphrodites and seed the room with pollen, and this pollen is hermaphrodite pollen, the seeds produced will be uncertain. I hear you say, so what i got a timer, move along, and while a timer is very very important, first lets talk about light pollution!, no not the highway lights and how they obscure your vision of the stars, light pollution is deadly to growers, from the light of a power board LED, to the slightest peak of bouncing sunlight, your room has to be completely sealed from ALL light contamination. I recommend the use of tents for most growers, these are a recent addition to the grow market(last ten years) and they are a god send, they allow growers to purchase completely sealed rooms for very good prices. I remember building rooms and it was never fun and always took a while to get it right.
Grow Chambers-These chambers are constructed with a lightweight framing material, encased bye reflective(internal) material, they use sippers and velcrow to seal the doors and intake/exhausts. They make it very easy to seal off the room and control the environment in the room, and create micro environments for your rooms. They have come down very reasonable prices, and come in any size imaginable(customizeable) and I highly recommend them. Here are some snaps of my chambers and its features.






Timer-So now you have protected you plants precious darkness. Lets look at timers, this is another thing growers under estimate. They are so important any breakdown can cost you a lot of money so be wary of cheap timers! I really cant stress this enough, I have tried my luck with cheap timers and its a bet you cant win. When growing your utilizing a lot of electricity, even with a smaller setup your system is drawing its power in a pulse(startup), it discharges some serious diodes to start up HID lighting and this results in some serious draw. So a lot of the cheap components in almost all the over the counter timers at retail outlets will fail pretty rapidly with HID use. Grow supplies stores now carry high end timers usually made locally and utilizing high end components designed to work under the conditions we require.

This is my timer, It was expensive but its over 10 years old now. This one is 15amp, and has 4 outlets, I've seen them designed with over 30 outlets and multiple different timer cycle's so if your dedicated you can get one custom built to suit your needs. Than you can use it for fans/watering/lighting/co2 whatever. Please stay tuned as I'll be writing more of these regularly. Hope it helped out. Thanks. @Medicalgrower

ps come check out my introduction and a look at my rooms
https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@medicalgrower/introduction-from-medicalgrower-with-growrooms

light image sourced: https://www.tes.com/lessons/cWob2FNIKlovPQ/the-creation-the-beginning